These essays and newsletters examine the role internal communication plays in trust, culture and organizational change. Written from the perspective of a strategic advisor, Lynn’s work challenges conventional thinking and offers clear, actionable insight into how communication can support business outcomes especially during moments that matter most.
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The Overlap Where Change Actually Sticks
Internal comms, change comms and change management often get lumped together usually by people who don’t do any of them for a living. They do overlap, but they’re not interchangeable. And when organizations treat them like they’re the same thing, behavior change becomes harder than it needs to be.
Here’s how I think about the three disciplines.
Internal communication is broad and ongoing. It’s the drumbeat that reinforces culture, builds connection and supports engagement across the organization whether change is happening or not.
Change communication is tied to a specific transformation. It’s strategic, time-bound and designed to build awareness, tailor messages to key audiences and help people move from “What is happening?” to “What does this mean for me?” to “What do I do now?”
Change management provides the structure for adoption: training, coaching, resistance management, sponsorship and the operational plan that helps teams actually change how work gets done.
So where’s the sweet spot?
It’s in the overlap where the strategy shifts from “information sharing” to behavior change:
- Strategic storytelling that helps people make meaning
- Trusted channels that employees actually use
- A clear “why” and a clear WIIFM
- Equipped managers who can lead conversations (not just forward messages)
- Embedded routines that make the new way of working feel normal
Behavior change lives here. Not in a single email. Not in an intranet post. And not in a project plan that assumes people will comply once they’ve been informed.
If you’re working on a transformation, try asking a better set of questions up front:
- What behavior needs to change?
- What’s in the way today?
- Who has influence where the work happens?
- What will employees need to believe before they’ll act?
- How will we measure whether anything actually changed?
When internal comms, change comms and change management are aligned, the change doesn’t just launch. It lands.
If your organization is mid-change and it feels like teams are “doing comms” but adoption is lagging, that’s usually a signal the overlap needs attention.
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